Field of the Invention
Versions and embodiments of the present invention relate generally to lathes and accessory equipment. Particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to lathes jigs for hand tools and uses thereof. Specifically but not intended to be limiting, versions of the invention relate to permanent and portable jigs to allow precise manual router and other hand tool integration with lathes and new, useful and unobvious versions thereof.
Description/Background of the Related Art
The art discussed herein is not to be considered admitted prior art but is presented to more clearly discuss and describe what is still lacking in the earlier art.
A lathe is a machine tool which rotates the workpiece on its axis to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or deformation, facing, turning, with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object which has symmetry about an axis of rotation. Lathes are used in woodturning, metalworking, plastics and with all other suitable materials. A lathe may or may not have legs which sit on the floor and elevate the lathe bed to a working height. A lathe may be small and sit on a workbench or table, and not require a stand.
Almost all lathes have a bed, which is (almost always) a horizontal beam (although CNC lathes commonly have an inclined or vertical beam for a bed to ensure that swarf, or chips, falls free of the bed). Woodturning lathes specialized for turning large bowls often have no bed or tail stock, merely a free-standing headstock and a cantilevered tool rest.
In metalworking and woodworking, a jig is a type of custom-made tool used to control the location and/or motion of another tool, such as a hand router. A jig's primary purpose is to provide repeatability, accuracy, and interchangeability in the manufacturing of products. Problems in the art are non-precise control of a hand router, for example, wasted time and lack of precision for repeatable details, increasing manufacturing labor and associated costs, and free-hand applied designs which may cause injuries.
Versions of this new and useful portable lathe jig allow repeatable and precise details into lathe workpieces parallel, angled and perpendicular to the lathe's rotational axis. One problem versions of this device solve is the ability of using a hand router (or other hand tool) on a workpiece in a precise repeatable pattern for aesthetic beauty and labor time savings for producing multiple copies of a product, like a wooden, plastic or metal bowl, for example, versus a cantilevered tool rest or free-hand of the old art. When the workpiece is finished on the spinning lathe, it is desired by artisans to created designs on. the stationary workpiece with hand tools. This device is far superior for creating designs with hand tools versus freehand tools.
No portable lathe jig device and/or system is known to this inventor that addresses these deficiencies in the earlier art in conventional lathe jigs. This new, useful and unobvious invention, in various embodiments, accomplishes this much needed advantage of increase in safety, and reduction in manufacturing labor time and costs versus conventional lathe jig devices and/or systems.